Is Bitcoin Going to Change the World?

Have we been looking at Bitcoin through the wrong lens? Forget “currency”; think “internet-scale asset register”. Make it your new year resolution to understand this insight and you’ll see why Bitcoin could change the world.

He is Executive Architect, Banking Industry Innovation for IBM UK. One of his responsibilities is to help his clients and colleagues think through the implications and opportunities of technology trends. Bitcoin is one of these trends and he has been studying it since 2011. At first, he thought this new world of “cryptocurrencies” was a technical curiosity: something to be monitored but probably only of minority interest. The key point to grasp is that the Bitcoin currency is just one application of something far deeper: the Bitcoin platform. And the Bitcoin platform is actually a very sophisticated, internet-scale asset register.

What do I mean by that?

As Michael Nielsen explains, the designers of Bitcoin set themselves an exceedingly difficult problem. They set out to build a system of electronic cash that required no participant to trust any other. This is audacious: every other system works on trust: I trust my airline not to inflate away the value of my frequent flyer miles (at least not too much) and I trust my online bank not to give my money to somebody else without my permission. The designers of Bitcoin turned this upside down.

They built a system that allows people to send electronic tokens to anybody else in the world without having to trust anybody else at all and without allowing the tokens to be lost or duplicated and they did this through an innovative combination of cryptography and economic insight. What they created is an internet-scale peer-to-peer network where participants have an overwhelming economic incentive to validate each other’s transactions and to maintain a truthful ledger of every transaction there has ever been. There is no central “bank”: everything is peer-to-peer and it runs across the public internet. It sounds insane (“store a copy of every transaction on every computer?!”) but it works surprisingly well. Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz has called it a profound technological innovation.

And this is why I think Bitcoin is so important. What looks like a novel system of digital cash on the surface is actually an internet-scale asset register. Sure – the assets today are these things we call “Bitcoins” but that doesn’t matter. Think of the Bitcoin currency as just the first application of something deeper: the Bitcoin platform. Here’s the thought process:

Remember the “walled gardens” of information before the web? Encylopaedias on CD-ROM? Emails you could only send to other customers of your ISP? The web changed all that and the world is an immeasurably better place as a result

Now think about finance: think about how complicated it is to move money around. How long it takes to settle equity trades. How expensive it is to make an international remittance.

Now think: what if you could represent real assets on the Bitcoin system? What if you could use the sophisticated contract technology in the Bitcoin system to implement rules about how assets are transferred? Could you simplify international remittances? Build next generation custody systems? Implement reliable micropayment systems for content consumption? If you are a financial institution, this platform represents amazing possibilities.

And the innovation is already happening: there are already companies providing international remittances at very low cost using the Bitcoin system and projects are underway to enable equity and bond trading (and settlement) across this platform.

I lived through the emergence of an internet-scale platform for information exchange and we all know how profoundly it changed the world. With the Bitcoin platform, we could be witnessing the emergence of an internet-scale platform for value-exchange.

If you need ideas for a new year resolution, I would humbly suggest you resolve to understand this system and think through the implications and opportunities for your business.

Like I said, forget the mania about the price… it simply isn’t important. It’s all about the platform!

About Richard Brown
He is Executive Architect, Industry Innovation for Banking and Financial Markets at IBM UK. He has been with IBM for almost fifteen years, where his previous roles have included Lead Account Architect for a global Investment Banking client and pre-sales and implementation consultancy for IBM software products for financial markets firms. His specialisation is in the integration of complex systems and he is an expert in the emerging field of “crypto currencies”. He is a Chartered Engineer, hold an MBA with Distinction from Warwick Business School and a first-class degree in Mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge.